The Divine Rehabilitation Of Jason Mewes
by Kleenexwoman
Summary: Reality can be stranger than any movie for Jason Mewes.
1. Part I

Title: The Divine Rehabilitation of Jason Mewes  
  
Author: Kleenexwoman  
  
Archive: Anywhere you want, just E-mail me first. Available for MSTing if you want.  
  
E-mail: kleenexwoman42@yahoo.com  
  
Summary: Our favorite blonde stoner discovers that reality is more surreal than any drug trip.  
  
Rating: R for some swear words, some sex, and drug references  
  
Disclaimer: None of Kevin Smith's characters belong to me. Neither does Kevin himself, or any of his friends, family, or co-workers. None of this really happened in real life and I am not saying it did. Also, this was partially based on the Philip K. Dick book "A Scanner Darkly" and probably has some other PKD references, and I'm aware of that and I'm not making any money off of any of this.  
  
Author's notes: This story is dedicated to Jason Mewes, whom I'm sure is doing the best he can. It's also dedicated to anyone who ever had to go into rehab. I've never been there myself and hope to never go, but I send my love and positive energy to all those who have the strength to go through with it.  
  
Ω  
  
He was older now. Fresh out of rehab, the track marks not yet faded on his arms. His golden hair shorn but growing out, no longer the belligerent, hyperactive street kid that five movies and an animated series had grown out of.  
  
Jason Mewes could have rested on his laurels (what laurels? all your money you pissed it away on heroin and it's not like you're really an actor anyway, you're just someone's weird friend), but that was something his counselor had warned him about, getting lazy and bored and that would just lead back to junk in a vicious cycle. Kevin had been only too pleased when he announced his rehabilitation and had offered him a partnership in View Askew Productions as a reward, but Jason was sick of the celebrity-pity that tended to come his way in that kind of position, sick of kids even dumber than him coming up to him on the street and talking to him in that weird Jersey slang he had perfected so many years ago.  
  
So he had agreed to run the comic shop for Kevin, the cozy storefront in Red Bank that bore the name of the company the semi-genius had created. Retail was pretty simple; Kevin had arranged most of the shipping and stuff, so all Jason had to do was take inventory and have conversations with the kids who came in.  
  
Hardly anybody recognized him as Jay anymore, and he was thankful for that. The occasional rabid fan, the type that traveled from Nebraska or California or Germany or wherever would usually see it—never when they came into the store, usually after he had rung up the comics and they would turn to go and then do a double take—"Hey, I know you! You're Jay! Hey, where's Silent Bob?" or something like that, and he would always nod and sort of smile and sign something for them, then go in the back and really, really want to light up a joint or shoot up (but of course he couldn't because that would lead to wanting more and then he'd be back in that cold grey building in Canada where the highlight of his day was getting a fucking Rice Krispie Treat at lunch), not to take the edge off or to calm himself down but just so that he could remember what it was like to be that dumb stoned kid again, the one whose biggest worry wasn't his veins collapsing and his body burning out like an unnamed character in a William Burroughs novel, but about whether he had enough money for an extra pack of Twinkies or Oreos at the Quick Stop.  
  
Yeah. That would have been simpler. Just slip into the movies, where fourteen-year-old girls got sex books published and pretty-boy angels bickered and God came down and kissed you and made everything all right again. Where two fictional stoners lived together and one never talked and the other one never got sick or scared or almost OD'd and went to the hospital, where the only backstories you had were the ones you needed for the plot. Where abusive parents and the pervasive, paralyzing fear of the hopelessness of real life did not an addict make, only the appeal to dumb 13-year-old boys and a good excuse to write dialogue so real it bordered on the brilliantly mundane. Jason would have liked that, even if it was only in black and white like that first one had been. He didn't even think about the colors any more.  
  
Ω Ω  
  
It might have been that old paranoid chestnut that the makers of educational filmstrips in the 1950s relished so much, that taking drugs will turn you permanently insane; of course, a milder version of that theory had been proven by the followers of Professor Timothy Leary—psychotropic drugs, especially the kind that try to stimulate those elusive neurons that flicker and buzz some of the time during sleep and all of the time in the brains of those whom God(ess?) has cursed or blessed with schizophrenia—taking those can indeed alter your brain patterns so that, at the most inconvenient times, as your cells align themselves and remember your mistakes one or five or thirty years ago, flashbacks resembling hallucinations occur. It might have been pure wishful thinking, an illusion fabricated by a pitying and frustrated brain out of nostalgia and longing. It might have been an unusually realistic dream of the type that psychology students under the thrall of a certain cigar-chomping, incestuous, dead Viennese gentleman do so love to receive and dissect. Or, as was Jason's intuitive conclusion, it might have been a tear in the fragile fabric of the universe itself, a subtle joke suggesting that there was more to the creation business than it seemed.  
  
In any case, they walked into the store. One was lanky and golden and sneering and flipping through random books that lay on the tables and sat in the racks, the other one stocky and dark and reserved, hands in pockets, taking it all in.  
  
Jason didn't recognize them at first. He was straightening up the Slave Labor Graphics rack, the one that held comics about little dead girls and creepy stories by Jhonen Vasquez. He had met Jhonen once, at a convention Kevin had dragged him to. Jason had felt that he and the blueheaded artist were clearly anathema to each other, but had said nothing because Kevin had seemed to assume that he and Jhonen would hit it off, and Jason didn't want to offend Kevin. He hated it when Kevin gave him one of those looks, the ones that made him feel like he had just swallowed a ball of red-hot needles and made him feel so bad that he swore, every time, that he would never do anything that would disappoint Kevin again so long as he didn't have to see that chiding hurt all over his face.  
  
Then the blonde one slapped a copy of some hentai comic on the counter. "Dude, you guys sell sex comics! I'm totally coming back here."  
  
"Yeah," mumbled Jason. "We sell pretty much everything—" He looked up and it was like looking into a mirror with a long memory.  
  
He quickly ducked his head. "That's, um, three twenty-five."  
  
"Silent Bob, pay the man," the blonde ordered. "I'm gonna check out these tentacle sex things." He wandered to the back of the store.  
  
The dark, heavy-set man dumped a pile of quarters on the counter. Jason stared at them. How many was three twenty-five? Let's see...if there were four quarters in a dollar...It was hard for him to think sometimes.  
  
"Thirteen," said Bob.  
  
"Thanks," mumbled Jason. He scooped thirteen quarters into the cash register and slid the other ones back toward Bob. "Enjoy your purchase." He looked up to tear the receipt.  
  
They stared at each other for a moment, eyes locked. Bob made a strangled noise deep in his throat. Jason stopped breathing.  
  
"Fell in love, Bob? You fag. Come on, let's get out of here." Jay clapped Bob on the shoulder.  
  
Ω Ω Ω  
  
"Jason? How'd it go?"  
  
Jason cradled the cell phone on his shoulder. "Kev, you don't have to check up on me every day."  
  
"I worry about you. You know that. You're going straight home, right?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Jason—"  
  
"Relax, I'm just going to pick up some orange juice."  
  
"Ok. Orange juice good. Seeya."  
  
Jason pressed the hang-up button and tossed the phone into the backseat. "Yes, dear," he muttered, turning into the parking lot of the Quick Stop. Kevin had offered to be his sponsor after the rehab. Apparently, being a sponsor meant nagging at Jason like a wife.  
  
He grabbed a carton of orange juice, then reached for a six-pack of beer. No, can't have beer either. Nothing mind-altering, remember? Not even caffeine. That's what the halfway house people said.  
  
"Jason, you gonna pay for that or just make love to it with your eyes?"  
  
For a second, Jason thought it was Dante. Another hint, another clue, another sign that reality was fucking up again. But no, the real-life Dante was long gone, probably moved onto another crappy job, and the actor that had played him was starring in a Farrelly brothers movie. The person that had yelled his name was Rachel, the fifteen-year-old girl who worked there after school.  
  
She listlessly rung up the carton. "Why are you still here, anyway? I thought you were in Los Angeles."  
  
"Nah. New Jersey is best for rehab."  
  
Rachel laughed. "Sure it is. Ask my brother. He's right outside."  
  
"Your brother?"  
  
"Yeah. Go ask Daniel how easy it is to resist temptation here. Go buy a baggie of coke from him. Did I tell you he's figured out how to make cocaine from sunburn cream? Ask him about it. Benzocaine in a freezer."  
  
Jason shook his head. "Don't really wanna know that, okay? I'm just...not really interested in that kind of stuff right now."  
  
"I can also make LSD from peanut shells," offered Rachel. "You just need a packet of Sweet and Low and something to crush it with. Want me to show you?"  
  
"Fuck, I don't need any of that shit right now!" Jason exploded. "I am in fucking rehab, okay? I've been in a prison for about six months and I don't want to go back there just because some stupid high-schooler can make LSD from fuckin' peanut shells!"  
  
"Yeah. Whatever." Rachel sullenly rang up the orange juice and didn't give Jason the right change. 


	2. Part II

"Jason, do you know anything about quadratic equations?"  
  
Jason looked away from filling his Brain Freezy cup. "Nah, I took Remedial Algebra all through high school. Why?"  
  
Rachel chewed on the end of her pencil. "Just homework."  
  
"You're doing homework now? Why?"  
  
"I gotta get good grades," Rachel said. "Gotta go to a good college, gotta get out of Red Bank, gotta get a good job." She looked up. "I saw some of those movies you were in over the weekend."  
  
"Which ones?"  
  
"The one about the angels, and the one with the clerks. Mom made me watch it. She says she doesn't want me to end up like the guy in the movie."  
  
"Good idea," said Jason. "Stay in school. Don't take drugs, all that shit. What'd you think of the movies?"  
  
Rachel shrugged. "The one with the clerks was sort of funny, I guess. I like Monty Python better."  
  
"What about "Dogma"?"  
  
Rachel wrinkled her nose. This was a maneuver which would have looked good on someone with a cute little button nose, a cheerleader perhaps. But Rachel had a long Roman nose, and was on the debate team besides, so it just made her look myopic. "It was sort of okay, I guess. But the theology was all wrong."  
  
Jason blinked. "How's it wrong?"  
  
"The Metatron bit, for example. A fallacy. The whole Voice of God idea was a superstition made up to explain the fusing of the bicameral mind several thousand years ago." She nodded and scribbled something on her notepaper.  
  
Jason shook his head. "I have no idea what you're talking about." "Haven't you ever read "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"? Oh, and the thing about God being both male and female, that's wrong."  
  
Jason wanted to hit his head on the counter, but settled for biting the edge of his cup. "Listen, it's just a movie, there's no—"  
  
"The universe began with two dynamics, male and female, entropy and regeneration. When humans evolved, they began to separate the two into good and evil, which consequently unbalanced the dynamics. The female dynamic, which was considered to be evil, sickened and died. The male dynamic mourned her loss and attempted to fit itself into the gap left by her presence. This meant that the universe became schizophrenic, which is why reality is so fucked up."  
  
Jason stared at Rachel. Her entire speech had been delivered in a complete monotone entirely unlike her usual petulant, precise speaking voice. The only part of it that had sounded anything like normal were the last eight words.  
  
"How the hell do you?..." he finally asked.  
  
Rachel shrugged. "Just common sense, really." She began humming.  
  
Jason rifled through the magazines at the counter. It was a minute before he realized that Rachel was trying to sing along with the Styx song currently playing on the sound system.  
  
"Secret secret, I got a secret. I am machine, not man, I'm an electric ant. My brain is IBM. Domo arigato, roboto-chan..."  
  
Jason blinked, and there was another hallucination. Rachel was no longer at the desk. Or rather, it was Rachel, but not Rachel as he had seen her these past few months. From the neck up, she was a perfectly ordinary fifteen- year-old girl. Below that, she was made up of whirring machinery, wires and computer chips.  
  
He understood perfectly now. Rachel was a robot. She probably didn't know it herself, because it had been programmed into her to think that she was a human. But some part of her somewhere knew, and that weird speech she had given him was something that only a robot could know. She was trying to tell him; unconsciously she wanted someone to find out. That was why she was singing that song.  
  
Where the hell had that idea come from?  
  
"Jason? Yo, Earth to Jason. What's wrong?"  
  
Jason shook his head, and Rachel was no longer a robot. "Spaced out, I guess. Fuck, that was weird."  
  
"What was?" Rachel sounded concerned. "What did you see?"  
  
Jason let out a laugh, an admission of his silliness. "For a second, I thought you were a robot. You were singing that song an' all, and..." He couldn't think of anything else to say, so he just trailed off.  
  
Rachel nodded. "I see. That's a common hallucination among recovering junkies." She dug in her pocket and produced a small blue round thing. It looked like a breath mint. "Maybe you should take this."  
  
Jason held up his hands. "I told you, I'm not allowed to have any of that shit."  
  
"It's not a drug," Rachel explained. "It's an antidrug, a powerful antihallucinogenic. It's called mors ontologica, and it reconciles both halves of your brain."  
  
Jason groaned. "You aren't going to go on that riff about God again, are you?"  
  
Rachel shrugged. "You already heard it. Anyway, the parallels should be self-evident." She tucked the pill into Jason's hand.  
  
Ω Ω Ω Ω  
  
Jason ate the pill. It was chewy, and it tasted like blue raspberry mint.  
  
"I took the blue pill," he said. "So what?"  
  
So nothing. He'd seen the Matrix. The blue pill rocketed you back to the little world you'd built up in your head. Maybe that would be better. Wasn't there a Pink Floyd song about it, about exchanging a walk-on part in a war for a starring role in a cage...Something like that.  
  
That was why he had started smoking pot in the first place. The future hadn't been worth shit for a foulmouthed little prick in New Jersey. Life was better if you couldn't see what was going to hit you, that was his motto.  
  
Why had Rachel had that pill anyway? She didn't need it. She was going to have a good life. No she wasn't, she was a robot and robots didn't have lives. But she wasn't a robot, she was just a kid and she had a pill and she gave it to Jason.  
  
Jason sat on the couch in his apartment and waited for the pill to take effect and thought about a story. In rehab, in the New Path, he had had a roommate named Horselover Fat. He'd laughed, because that was a stupid name, but Horselover Fat (he refused to let anyone call him by a shortened version of his name) wasn't someone to laugh at.  
  
Horselover Fat had told him a story about a buddy of his. This buddy had taken an incredible amount of acid once, and been on a trip for about a day and a half.  
  
"He was totally out of it," Horselover Fat said. "He was speaking in tongues, and it was only afterwards that we found out he was speaking perfect Latin. And he saw God."  
  
"I've seen God, too," Jason had said. "She looked a lot like Alanis Morrissette."  
  
Horselover Fat shook his head. "No, not Yahweh as it says in the Bible. Yahweh is the occluded creator god; there is one more important. Anyway, this guy said he saw a doorway. It was beautiful, and there were red and gold sparks coming off it, and through the doorway he saw a sunset sky and a wine-dark sea, and a statue, like a Greek statue. And he sat there staring at the door for hours, because it was so beautiful. And it was only afterwards that he realized that the doorway had been God and the place he saw was Heaven." The bearded man looked into the distance. "But he had been so busy wondering at the beauty of the door that he didn't go through. And then he was so depressed, because he knew that he would never see it again."  
  
"So what did he do?" Jason asked.  
  
"Oh, he killed himself." Horselover Fat chuckled to himself, although it wasn't funny. "The joke was on him, though, because the Bible says that you can't get to Heaven if you kill yourself."  
  
Jason thought he knew what the man in the story had felt. He had seen some of the divine glory when God had kissed him on the steps of that hundred- year-old church in New Jersey. He had understood everything, known everything, felt every emotion there was to feel (but you didn't, Jay did, he was the one that got kissed by God and all you did was get to tell dirty jokes to a Canadian singer), but now that the movie cycle was over, now that "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back!" was done filming and the saga was laid to rest, he knew that there was no chance of him ever feeling that again. He couldn't lobby Kevin to include another appearance by God in another movie, because he wouldn't be in it. He wouldn't be Jay for God to kiss.  
  
Horselover Fat had been a pretty weird guy. He had been writing some kind of treatise on religion, and he had read some of it to Jason. Now that Jason thought about it, bits of it had been almost identical to some of the things Rachel had been saying.  
  
But there was no time to think about that now. Jason had to get to the comic book store and take inventory. At least, he thought as he got up to leave, if he couldn't put his mind and his thoughts and his life in some semblance of order, he could tidy up someplace else. 


	3. Part III

"What the fuck is going on?"  
  
Jason looked up from the "Daredevil" comic he was reading. "What's going on?"  
  
"That's what I asked you, fucker." Jay slammed his hand on the counter. "A week ago me an' Silent Bob come in here, it's a new store and everything, a comic store. Bob and me like comics, so we come and check it out, and you've got shit that the store at the mall never had. I mean, tentacle sex stuff! And these weird fuckin' comics about the guy who kills people and the stick figure that yells shit, so we come in and we check it out, right?"  
  
"Yeah." Jason pulled his baseball cap down further over his eyes.  
  
"So ever since then, I been noticin' some weird shit."  
  
"What kind of weird shit?"  
  
Jay leaned forward onto the counter. "Really weird shit. Like Brodie Bruce and Banky Edwards—and that one demon guy—you don't know them, but they're all people I know. And before last week I never realized it, but they're all the same fuckin' people!" He poked Jason in the chest. "And Shannon Hamilton and Holden McNeil and that angel, the crazy one, they're all the same too. What the fuck did you do to me?"  
  
Jason shook his head. "I didn't do shit, all right? Listen, if you're imagining crap, you have no one to blame but yourself."  
  
"Oh no, fucker, I ain't standin' for that. Hey, you look at me when—" Jay ripped Jason's baseball cap off his head.  
  
Jason closed his eyes as Jay's grew wider. "Oh holy fuck. Motherfucker. Holy fucking shit."  
  
"Don't say that, all right?" Jason practically screamed. "Just calm down. Just calm down."  
  
Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω  
  
Jason closed up the store, put a "Be back in fifteen minutes" sign on the front door. He and Jay sat on the back stoop in the waning Jersey sun.  
  
Jay laughed. "So I guess it was just a matter of time, right? I mean, before I found someone that was me. If Brodie and Holden and those other dudes have people that look like them, I guess I got one too."  
  
Jason shook his head. "No, that isn't it. Brodie looks like Banky looks like Azrael because they are the same people, not just doppelgangers."  
  
Jay frowned. "Wait. Brodie isn't Banky. I know that. And neither of them got horns."  
  
"No, I mean—" Jason stared at his hands, unable to find the words to make Jay understand. "Well, Brodie and Banky and Azrael aren't the same people, but they're played by the same guy."  
  
Jay nodded. "Like a movie."  
  
"Yes! Yes, like a movie. Exactly like in a movie."  
  
"So like they're different people, but they're based on the same thing."  
  
Jason shrugged. If Jay wanted to believe that, he could. It was probably closest to the truth. "I guess. But you and me, we're different from the way they are."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"We're the same person. Except you're me about fifteen years ago."  
  
"You don't look older than me."  
  
"No, I mean, we're both the same age. But you act like I did when I was fifteen. Except...you don't, exactly. Somewhere in the script you changed a little."  
  
Jay thought about this. Then he pulled out a pack of Nails. "Yo, want one?"  
  
Jason shook his head. "I can't."  
  
"Some weed then? I think I got some on me."  
  
"I can't."  
  
Jay gave him a look out of the corner of his eye. "Man, why not?"  
  
Jason sighed. "I just got out of rehab, okay? And I'm sick of people hassling me about it."  
  
Jay snorted. "What, for pot? Jeez."  
  
"For heroin!" Jason shouted. "I'm not like you. I don't have such a great life with Silent Bob. I can't just smoke some weed and let it all go away, I have to deal with shit that I'm not equipped for." He rolled up his sleeve. "You see? You see the needle marks? That's my fucking life!"  
  
Jay traced the track marks with his fingertips. "Shit," he whispered. He stopped. "Holy fuck. Can you feel that?"  
  
Jason had. He had felt himself (Jay) touching Jason's (his) arm. Felt Jay feeling Jason feeling Jay feeling Jason and on and on ad infinitum, forever in a recursive tactile circle.  
  
Jason smiled weakly. "You see? We are the same person."  
  
Jay was silent for a moment. Then he said, "This could be fun. Jacking off and shit, it'd be like ultimate masturbation."  
  
Jason stared at himself in shock. Had he really just said that? He remembered an interview where the questioner had asked him, "Is Jay really a sensitive and emotional person just putting up a crude front to protect himself, or is he really that dumb and tactless and just does whatever's on his mind?" The answer, he recalled, had been "Yeah, maybe." Now he wished he had given a more definite answer.  
  
Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω  
  
They went back to the apartment that Jay and Bob shared. For a moment he felt like he was invading the world that the two shared, but then reminded himself that he was Jay anyway so it didn't matter.  
  
They sat on the couch. Jay leaned over and kissed Jason, brushing his lips against his cheek, and Jason again felt that recursive touch cycle. It tingled.  
  
"Wow," murmured Jay.  
  
Jason twisted a lock of Jay's long blonde hair around his fingers. It slipped through his hand, and he felt a phantom tugging at his own head. "I missed this," he said.  
  
Jay ran his fingers through Jason's shorn hair. He felt the alien touch on his own hands, the soft bristly slide. "They made you cut it off."  
  
Jason nodded. "The people at New Path said my long hair marked me as a member of the subculture. They wanted me to be a productive member of society an' shit."  
  
"Damn." Jay shook his head. "Didn't that whole short hair, long hair thing go out with, like, the 1960s?"  
  
"There are a lot of people that are stuck in the 60s," said Jason. He wrapped Jay's long hair around his hand, feeling it slide, feeling the soft pressure on his own head.  
  
Jay slid his hand up Jason's neck and drew their heads together, foreheads touching. He softly kissed Jason on the mouth, running his tongue over his lips.  
  
Jason pulled away. "I can't. I'm sorry, I can't."  
  
Jay looked at him in puzzlement. "What's wrong?"  
  
"This is too much. You're kissing me, and—I'm you, I'm kissing me."  
  
Jay sat back. "Well fuck, if you can't handle this shit." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter."  
  
Jason studied his counterpart, trying to decode his actions. Did Jay really not care? Why was it that he could feel Jay touching him, but he couldn't feel what he was thinking?  
  
Rachel had been right. Horselover Fat had been right. The universe was schizophrenic.  
  
Jason grabbed Jay by the shoulders, pushing him onto his back on the couch. Kissed him as roughly as he dared, thrusting his tongue into his mouth, biting his lower lip, tasting his own taste. He ignored the sensations battling within his head, the screaming of his own mind asking him what the hell he thought he was doing.  
  
Jay moaned. "Yeah, that's it." He fumbled with Jason's pants, finally figuring out that they were sweatpants and sliding his hand down. "Oh shit, that's fuckin' weird!"  
  
"What?" Jason murmured.  
  
"It's like you're touchin' me, like when I'm feelin' what you're feelin' and..."  
  
"Yeah." Jason shut his eyes. Once you got into it, it made sense. He mirrored Jay's actions, hearing with pleasure the gasp it elicited from both of them.  
  
They shed their clothes, tasted each other's skin, explored the same bodies they shared. Felt the same, tasted the same, sounded the same, said the same, came the same at the same instant—and then they were both of them at the same time. 


	4. Part IV

Jason lay on the couch, covered in sweat and fluids from—himself. He brushed a strand of his long blonde hair out of his eyes. Something had just happened, but he didn't know what it was or whether it had actually taken place.  
  
The door creaked open, and Kevin's bulky form came into the room. "Hey, have you been on the couch all day?"  
  
Jason nodded. "I been waiting for you. Come here." He raised himself up on his elbows and received a soft kiss from Kevin.  
  
Kevin drew back and took off his coat, tossing it onto the kitchen table. "God, what a day. Jen almost beat up Matt."  
  
"Why?" Jason held back a giggle, trying to imagine Matt Damon and Jennifer Lopez in a fight.  
  
"Oh, she thinks Ben's cheating on her with him. Not that she's not right, but I was hoping she wouldn't find out until after the movie's done." Kevin plopped himself down on the couch. "And Michael Moore called me and asked if I wanted to collaborate on a documentary about drug use in America with him."  
  
"Why does Michael Moore want to do a documentary with you?"  
  
"Apparently he thinks we look alike." Kevin shrugged.  
  
Jason studied his lover's features. "You do, sort of. You've got the beard thing going on and all."  
  
"Maybe, but that's not a good reason to do a documentary together." Kevin tilted his head back and closed his eyes.  
  
Jason snuggled up to him, feeling incredibly happy. Kevin was his. Nobody else's. No wife, no kids...Why would he think that Kevin had a wife and kids?  
  
It had always been like this. Just Jason and Kevin, living in an apartment, making their movies and hanging out at the mall and smoking pot—just a little, because they didn't really need it. They had a perfect life together. They always would.  
  
Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω  
  
Kevin paced up and down the aisles of the Quick Stop, occasionally glaring at the frizzy-haired girl that sat frightened behind the counter. "Why did you give it to him? What were you thinking?"  
  
"I didn't know it would affect him like that!" Rachel protested.  
  
"He's in a coma now! He's in intensive care! It was a good thing I found him when I did or else he would be dead! My daughter is asking when her Uncle Jason is going to wake up!" Kevin shook his head at the sheer idiot malevolence of the universe and of convenience store clerks. "He was in rehab, for Christ's sake. Didn't you know that?"  
  
"It wasn't even a drug! Listen, he was going on about how I was a robot and I wanted to calm him down, so I told him it was an antihallucinogenic! I thought it would work like a placebo."  
  
"Then what was it?" Kevin demanded.  
  
Rachel dug a roll of candy out of her pocket. "These. We just got them in today." She showed the roll to Kevin.  
  
Kevin took it and looked at the label, big blue block letters on a background of green and purple stripes. "Blue Mints, a new taste sensation from Ubik Incorporated," he read. He turned the roll and read, "Safe when used as directed."  
  
"I wasn't exactly sure what that meant," Rachel explained. "There weren't any directions on the label, so I thought it was just one of those little advertising things. Like with that English candy bar that says it's not for girls."  
  
Kevin pried a mint out of the wrapper and popped it into his mouth. It tasted like blue raspberry and mint. "These are gross," he said, handing the package back to her.  
  
"Well, if you don't like 'em don't eat 'em," Rachel said, sticking the pack in her pocket. "Is Jason going to be okay?"  
  
"We don't know," Kevin said. "The doctor said that there's no physiological reason for him to be in the coma. Apparently his brain's working fine."  
  
"It's probably a withdrawal from reality," Rachel suggested. "It happens in a lot of addicts. They can't handle life sans drugs, so they just make up their own little world and stay in it. It happened to my brother Daniel."  
  
"I'm sorry," Kevin said automatically.  
  
"Don't be. He was only out for an hour, and he deserved it, the little jackass."  
  
Kevin cast for words. "Um...so at least we know that it's not your fault, then. I'm sorry I yelled at you like that."  
  
"Yeah." Rachel shrugged. "By the way, did Jason ever tell you what I said about 'Dogma'?"  
  
Kevin blinked. "Um, no. Why would he?"  
  
"Because I told him to. Not that it matters now. I guess you'll find out eventually."  
  
"I will?"  
  
"Yup." Rachel fingered the roll of mints in her pocket and smiled to herself.  
  
Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω  
  
And in one universe, two men sit on the couch and kiss and love their lives. And in another, a blonde stoner waits for his quiet friend. And in another, a former addict lies in a bed in a hospital. And in another, a fifteen-year-old girl hums to herself as she closes up the store. And in another, a god reunites with her twin, and a dead man writes, and nobody is sure what is real and what is not. And furthermore, they don't seem to care. 


End file.
